


falling like ashes

by uwumeup



Series: skephalo oneshots [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Minor Violence, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Slash, Skeppy is part of Manberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:28:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uwumeup/pseuds/uwumeup
Summary: Skeppy caught a glance of the man’s cape and mustered up as much of a snarl as he could in his state. “I thought you bastards were sided with Pogtopia.”“We of The Badlands don’t side with anyone.” The man straightened up, but softened when he noticed Skeppy's flinch. “That also means that we don’t necessarily side against anyone, especially when they’re in as bad a shape as you are right now."-an au where skeppy is part of manberg, and the war against pogtopia didn't go quite as planned
Relationships: Zak Ahmed & Darryl Noveschosch, Zak Ahmed/Darryl Noveschosch
Series: skephalo oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044978
Comments: 9
Kudos: 242





	falling like ashes

**Author's Note:**

> // please heed the tags! there are minor depictions of blood, injuries, and violence but nothing detailed :]

Skeppy let the blood-stained hilt of his sword slip from his grip and clatter to the ground in favour of clutching his front, nearly doubling over to do so. His chestplate had splintered not long ago, leaving near half of his torso completely exposed. He couldn’t decide what hurt more, the axe to the leg that he’d received earlier on in the fight, or the firework to the stomach from a few minutes ago. The way that the oak tree swam back and forth in his vision told him that neither was good. Basically, he felt like he was either going to throw up, pass out, or both.

How the hell had he even gotten into this mess?

Schlatt- no, not Schlatt, that fucking dictator of a president hadn’t even been there for the meeting- _Dream_ had said that they’d be fine; that this so-called war would just be a small scuffle, just a few stragglers from the shadow of a former nation that was Pogtopia; that they would probably be taken out with a few crossbow shots, nothing more. When a whole-ass army had shown up, no one knew what to do but throw themselves headfirst into the battle. It was an effort that seemed to have completely failed, from what Skeppy had been able to catch while attempting to fight off five opponents of his own.

He didn’t even like Manberg, didn’t agree with their morals or stance and sure as hell didn’t agree with their choice of a leader, but they’d welcomed him with open arms - something that no other nation had done. Looking back, Skeppy knew he’d just fallen victim to their propaganda; he would’ve internally kicked himself for not realizing it before, had he not winced even at the thought of bearing any more pain than he already was.

The boy’s shoulder connected with the tree, which had finally stopped wavering in his vision as he’d approached it. He slid down a bit, more crumpled in a heap against it than leaning. His hand was still over his stomach, and even pulling it away for a moment made him gag at the amount of blood pooling from it through his shirt, so he pressed harder despite the pain it caused him. The clouds shielded the sun, and he figured it could be twisted into a metaphor of sorts, but he wasn’t a poet in any light, and he wouldn’t have bothered to expand on the thought even if he was. His mind was too wrapped around one fact.

He was going to die out here.

He was going to brutally die in the middle of a warzone for a cause that he didn’t even believe in, for a leader that he hated the guts of and, somehow, he felt like he’d already accepted it. Some time along the way, whether it be before or during the brutality that he’d just experienced, that he was still tiptoeing the border of, he’d accepted that this was where he’d die.

Skeppy’s eyes watered, and he gritted his teeth in an attempt to push it down, despite there being no one around to witness. It was the principle that mattered, he wasn’t going to grieve about his own death when he’d been the one to cause it. There’d been plenty of choices along the way that could have strayed him far away from where he was now, but he hadn’t made them. It felt like when you read a book and could see every wrong decision that the main character made, how you just wanted to scream at them to choose a different path, but were rendered helplessly stuck in your own reality.

He wondered if there was anyone along the way who thought the same way about him.

“Hey, are you alright?”

The warmth of the voice felt like a sudden lick of fire in the center of the cold sharpness, and Skeppy could hardly bear to look up at the source, fearing it to be nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s skin, perhaps a figment of his blood-deprived mind.

“ _Hey_.” The voice pressed forward, tone slightly more on edge, and a hand on his shoulder was enough to make him snap up to face them.

A hood covered most of his features, but as brown eyes met white, the boy pulled it back, revealing a mop of brown hair, small horns just poking out between locks. The man’s eyes, now green in the light, widened, and his brows turned down further as they dragged across Skeppy’s injuries. “Wow, you’re in pretty rough shape, huh?”

He pulled his bag from his side, rustling through it for a moment before letting out a sharp huff. “I must’ve given my last health potion to Ant, sorry. But, hey, we’ve got a shelter not far from here. I can take you there to rest and deal with some of, well,” the brunette gestured up and down his body, “ _that_.”

Skeppy caught a glance of the man’s cape and mustered up as much of a snarl as he could in his state. “I thought you bastards were sided with Pogtopia.”

“We of The Badlands don’t side with _anyone_ .” The man straightened up, but softened when he noticed Skeppy's flinch. “That also means that we don’t necessarily side _against_ anyone, especially when they’re in as bad a shape as you are right now. C’mon-”

He looped an arm under Skeppy’s, pulling him away from the tree he’d been propped against. It was an uncomfortable hold, with their armor scraping against each other awkwardly, but comfort wasn’t either of their priorities at the moment.

“Hold this,” the boy said, and Skeppy took the shield he was handed wearily, attempting to keep it from weighing down on his bad leg too much, “Just to make sure we don’t get hit by any stray arrows, or fireworks, for that matter.”

The man pointed to something in the distance, and Skeppy squinted in an attempt to see it, but failed. The combination of smoke from explosions and dirt kicked up during the conflict created a barrier of sorts, making it near impossible to see any further past even the boy beside him; although, he was sure the blood that trailed down from his head into and his eye certainly didn’t help. Before he realized, he was being pulled forward at a steady pace, the other clearly being mindful of both his injuries and fading consciousness.

“Where exactly did you say we were going again?” Skeppy’s mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton, but he spat out the question anyways.

“We’ve got a small base just further up this way set up with some materials and stuff, we can get you patched up there. It’s only a few minutes away, so it’ll be a quick trip.”

Skeppy hummed in response; whether it was because he didn’t have anything else to say, or didn’t have the energy to say it, he wasn’t sure. He could feel his fingers loosening on the shield, and scrunched his eyes shut, shaking his head in an attempt to stop himself from blacking out completely. The grip on his shoulders tensed a bit, and he could feel the boy suck in a breath of air before he spoke.

“So, what’s your name?”

Skeppy narrowed his eyes. “What does it matter t’you?”

“I dunno, just curious.” The brunette shrugged, turning his head and flinching as he saw the remnants of a firework explosion from that direction, before facing Skeppy again. “I’m Bad. I don’t know if you knew that already, since you seem to already know about The Badlands, but…”

“No, just noticed the cape while fighting. What’re you, their leader?” He slurred.

Bad paused, before settling on a response. “Something like that.”

The sound of an arrow whizzing towards them startled Skeppy out of the fuzziness, and he flinched as it embedded itself in the wood of the shield, causing him to lean most of his weight onto Bad for a moment.

“Woah, woah, hey,” The brunette pushed him back onto his feet, letting out a huff as he scanned the area around them again; as much as he could through the haze, at least. “It looks like that was just a fluke, no one’s aiming for us, but we’d best get out of here before they start.”

Bad began to pull him forward again, a bit hastier this time, and Skeppy almost stumbled over himself trying to keep up. Finally, he could make something out through the haze, almost like a dark wall, but it was only when they got closer that he realized they were trees - a forest. Something built up in his chest, a fear that he couldn’t explain buzzing around, and he almost pulled out of Bad’s grip. They weren’t supposed to go in the forests alone; they were far too twisted, too easy to get disoriented, to get _killed_ in. So many soldiers had been lost in them, so many search parties that should have been sent out. They never were; Schlatt didn’t give a shit about any of them.

Bad’s whispers to him were quiet, and he could barely make them out over the yells in the distance, the sounds of armour clashing with swords and bodies hitting stone. “It’s alright, I know where we’re going.”

He couldn’t tell how far they walked into the forest, but it was far enough that the clouds of dust couldn’t reach. They were in a near silence; at least, they _would_ be, had it not been for Skeppy’s heartbeat still pounding in his ears, the wheezing breaths that felt so disconnected from himself that it took him a while to realize he was the one making them. Bad carefully let go of him, propping him against one of the trees, and for a moment it sent Skeppy back to the battlefield, hand clutched over his stomach, bleeding out without a soul around to even witness. A hum broke him out of it.

“It should be around here somewhere…”

Skeppy’s eyes, slightly glazed over, landed on Bad. He had squatted down, hands tracing over the surface of the rock as if looking for something, before pausing. Hands balled tightly into fists as he let out a huff. His gaze dragged to the boy’s sword at his hip, to the bow on his back. Bad could kill him right now, it dawned on him, far too quickly and far too easily. They were in the dead middle of a forest that he couldn’t recognize, injured enough that the boy wouldn’t even have to break a sweat in a chase, a predator circling its weakened prey.

It was a stupid thought, the only rational part of his brain that was functioning reasoned - why would he spend the time to drag Skeppy here if only to do something that he could have done out there with no added consequences? In fact, it probably would’ve been more beneficial to do it out there; Schlatt would have fucking praised the guy if he saw, he always seemed to have some sort of vendetta against Skeppy, for whatever reason. Maybe it was his attitude, or just the fact that Schlatt knew the boy would have to put up with his shit no matter how badly he treated him, but Skeppy hated it, either way.

Even with Schlatt’s encouragement, he couldn’t imagine Bad going through with it, but his mind was too muddled to figure out why.

“Ah- there we go!” The brunette said, along with the sound of a lever flipping.

There was a sudden rumbling that could’ve been mistaken for an earthquake, and Skeppy pressed himself further into the tree, watching as the ground opened up in front of them. Pieces of dirt broke apart to reveal a staircase leading down far enough that he couldn’t quite see the bottom. He didn’t bother to tear his widened eyes away from it, even as Bad approached, wrapping an arm under his again and pulling Skeppy away from the tree to lean his weight against him.

“Wow.”

The brunette let out a light laugh, leading both of them into the entrance and starting down the steps. “I know, ‘wow.’ Sam’s really good with redstone."

He could only nod in response, if you could even call it a nod. It was more his head slumping forward in a ragdollish way, feeling as if it’d been filled with bedrock. Bad’s eyebrows furrowed together at the action, and he shook Skeppy slightly.

“Hey, are you okay? We can wait a minute if you need it.”

Skeppy shook his head again, trying to shake away the staticy feeling buzzing around him at the same time. “No, ‘m oka-”

The clatter of a shield dropping sounded distant, although Skeppy could feel the handle slip from his own hands. Bad was saying something, he could tell, yet it was far too muffled for him to make out any of the sentences, any of the sounds at all even. Skeppy wanted to ask him to speak up, but couldn’t seem to get the words to his mouth - he couldn’t think of the words at all.

He didn’t realize he was falling until his face was an inch from the floor.

* * *

_“Bad, we already told you that no one else could come down here-”_

_"I know, but he was injured, he was going to die."_

_"It's a war, Bad - people die, that's what happens!"_

_“You don’t get it, he… I don't know. I needed to give him a chance.”_

_“...I’ll talk to Sam.”_

A slam shook Skeppy, and he peeled his eyes open to a stone ceiling, before squeezing them shut again.

"Shit, that's bright…" He hissed, pulling the blanket over his head. Glowstone lighting was awful, an unnecessarily bright and expensive alternative to torches, or lanterns even.

Balling his hands further into the sheets, he let out a long sigh; the sheets in Manberg weren't like the soft cotton that this one was, they were some awful wooly material that made his skin itch and tickled his nose if he tried to bury his face in it. He wondered if it was a tactic of sorts, to make their sheets so uncomfortable that it basically forced them out of bed, if the damn announcements from Schlatt’s second-hand, Tubbo, at 6am every morning didn't already.

Speaking of, it seemed like the announcements hadn't gone off this morning; they were practically impossible to sleep through for anyone within a hundred mile radius, and Skeppy doubted that he'd woken up before them.

His eyes snapped open, breath catching in his throat as his mind backtracked - this wasn't his bed.

He jolted up, the glowstone lights should've given it away in the first place, and yet his mind had been too groggy to even question it. It almost felt like he'd drank a potion or something from the haziness that seemed to hover around him, humming at his skin, likely just a side effect of the head wound he was still nursing. He reached up, fingers brushing against the bandages that were wrapped around his forehead.

How did he get here again?

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Skeppy’s gaze flickered across the room, forcing his eyes to adjust to the harshness of the lights above him. He didn’t recognize this place in the slightest, and he’d been through near every inch of Manberg’s land, including the dungeons, which had been his first guess. It was far too nice for anything they could’ve made, he realized - when Schlatt was in charge of building, it usually ended up being a mess of scrap materials that were stuck together to form some semblance of a building; when he wasn’t, Tubbo was put in charge. Tubbo wasn’t nearly as bad when it came to that (when it came to anything, really), but the redstone lining the walls seemed far too complicated for the kid to have planned out.

"What are you doing, you dunderhead?!"

He snapped to face the hallway, wide eyes locking on the man approaching him, stopping right beside the bed.

"I know you might _feel_ better, but the potion only healed up some of your smaller injuries - that cut on your stomach is really nasty, you'll have to rest until it heals up a bit more." He- Bad, Skeppy recalled, said sternly, arms crossed as he stared at him, waiting.

He blinked, mind still reeling, and Bad seemed to take it as a refusal. " _Fine_ , if you don't want to rest then you can at least eat something."

Bad, _Bad_ \- that was right, Bad had taken him in. He’d dragged Skeppy all the way across the battlefield while said battle was still in full swing, had seemingly nursed him back to health while he laid unconscious in the middle of the guy’s house. Was this his house? He couldn’t quite remember what he’d said about that.

As the boy left the room, Skeppy brushed the bandages on his head again, gingerly, and then pulled up the bottom of his shirt. Where there’d previously been a long gash across his stomach, the skin had paled, beginning to scar over the scab that had formed, stitches weaving in and out of skin. His eyes widened, letting out a soft breath. It could have killed him- _would_ have killed him, had it not been for Bad. He owed him his life. (He used to owe Schlatt his life too, but he figured that this near-death ‘in his honour’ would count as enough of a return for that.)

“I told you that you should’ve rested, I _knew_ that you weren’t feeling well, but you just kept insisting that you were fine! Do you know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t caught you at the last second?” Bad ranted, a dish of baked potatoes in each hand.

He passed one to Skeppy, who stabbed a fork into the potato before pausing mid-bite, heaving out a breath. "How do I know these aren't poisoned?"

"Why would I bring you all the way here and heal you up just to poison you?" Bad laughed, shoving a piece into his own mouth. "Oh, and I never got your name! I figured that you'd be more open to sharing it now that we aren't out there and everything."

Skeppy quirked a brow, "What if this is some elaborate scheme to get me to tell you so you can have some kind of power over me?"

"Oh, yeah, once I get your name I'll be able to hypnotize you and use you as my servant." He said sarcastically. "Look, I just don't want to keep having to call you 'that one muffin' in my head. You don’t even have to tell me your real name, but if you don’t give me anything I might have to come up with something myself."

"Fine," Skeppy paused, eyes trained on his plate. "It's Skeppy."

"Hmm, Skeppy." Bad said, rolling it off his tongue. "I like that, it's spunky."

" _Spunky_?"

"Yeah, you know, cool, high-spirited. I think you seem pretty spunky- probably more so when you aren't healing from a stab wound and, well, everything." He chuckled, a hint of bittersweetness in it, but the comment made Skeppy freeze.

"Shit," He set aside the plate frantically, food left uneaten, "Shit! What am I doing here? I need to get back out there- people are still fighting, my friends are still fighting!"

"Calm down," Bad hurried to grab Skeppy's arm as he pushed himself up, letting go as the boy flinched away. "What're you doing?"

Skeppy stared at him, eyebrows drawing together. "What do you think I'm doing? I'm going back out there!"

He hissed as he put weight on his leg, but pointedly ignored Bad's move to help him. Pacing around the room, he let out a huff. "Where the hell did you put my armour? My sword?"

Bad let out a soft breath, a realization dawning on him. "I forgot, you wouldn't know."

"Wouldn't know _what_?"

"Skeppy, the war is over. Schlatt is dead."

"Dead? What the fuck do you mean he's dead?"

Schlatt couldn't be dead, he had an army of soldiers practically glued to him at all times, standing outside his door, travelling with him from place to place… He'd always been convinced that people were watching him, waiting for the chance to kill him. As much as Skeppy liked to chalk it up to paranoia, he wouldn't have been surprised if the guy was right; there were a lot of reasons someone would want him dead. But that would mean that all his soldiers - all the people he'd assigned to guard the door to his room, situated on every floor of the castle because he didn't bother to care about anyone's life other than his own - all of them would be dead too.

"They found him in his room," Bad continued, "Drank himself to death, apparently. I almost feel bad for him, but I guess he got what was coming..."

Skeppy let out a breath, a combination of relief and pure disbelief. It made sense, in a weird way, despite the irony of the situation. It felt as if Schlatt was always going to be his own downfall, in one way or another. Nothing could take him down except for himself - his own arrogance, his lack of restraint, all of it.

"And Manberg… well, it got blown up. There's barely anything left other than scraps of buildings. I'm not sure if they're gonna try and rebuild there or not, I'm not sure if there's even a point.”

He was a free man now, technically, and the thought lifted a weight off his chest for a moment. No more serving under a dictator and being forced to fight for something he couldn't care less about, no more irritating wake-up calls and monotonous training and living life just for the sake of it. He was a free _fucking_ man.

And after a moment of that warm feeling, the weight crashed back down, pushing the air from his lungs. He was a free man, just like before, when he didn't have anyone or anywhere to go to. Manberg had been his home; it wasn't sweet nor cozy and it felt more like a recruitment camp than anything, but it was the only place he had. Schlatt had been there to welcome him with open arms and give him a bed when he'd been sleeping on tree branches and hay bales, and it'd just been blown up in the matter of… Well, at least in the time he’d been unconscious for, considering he was sure he would have noticed had it happened before then.

Bad seemed to take notice of the forlorn expression on his face, eyebrows knitting together.

"I don't have anywhere now," he said, tongue heavy in his mouth. "Manberg was a piece of shit home, but it was the only one I had."

The brunette let out a sigh, "Well, you see Skeppy, we have a bit of a problem."

 _‘A problem?’ A problem bigger than any of this?_ Skeppy wanted to spit, but bit it back, allowing Bad to speak.

"You aren't really supposed to be down here, I mean, Sam and Ant were already getting at me about it because it's meant to be our _secret_ base and bringing other people down here kind of eliminates that purpose- but I couldn’t just leave you out there! When I saw you out there, Skeppy, I could tell that there was something in you. I knew you didn't want to be out there, I just…"

"I mean," Skeppy broke in after a moment of silence, "You're right, I didn't want to be fighting for that scumbag. What's your point?"

Bad looked him in the eyes, straightening up. "I want you to join us."

He blinked, mind processing the thought slowly. "Join you?"

"You said it yourself, you have nowhere to go, right? That's what it was like for most of us. Ant, Sam, and I, we didn't have anything. None of us had anyone else to turn to, so we turned to each other."

"How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you aren't gonna screw me over like Schlatt did? What makes you think you're any different?"

"I mean, you're here," Bad said. "You would've died out on that battlefield without me."

Skeppy swallowed, the pain of his stomach flaring up again as if to remind him. "I would have, wouldn't I?"

At Bad's nod, he broke eye contact, letting out a soft breath. His mind reeled back, thinking of all the things that had led him up to that point; the war, before that, before he'd even gotten into Manberg, back when Schlatt's guards came across him all those years ago, sparing his life. Skeppy remembered how Schlatt had looked at him, eyes half-lidded and lips curled into his cheeks. Even back then, when the man chose to house him with a room instead of a prison cell, he'd felt an uneasiness. His hairs prickled at the back of his neck, heart racing, but he'd swallowed it down. 

His eyes trailed to Bad, to the shine in his eyes, mind echoing the way he talked about Skeppy; with a passion that he hadn't had directed towards him in years. Trust, he realized in that moment, was the reason he couldn’t imagine Bad killing him. Even after they’d just met, the boy had expressed more kindness than Skeppy had seen in years, had been more open and generous than Schlatt- than _anyone_ in Manberg had been.

Skeppy was finally in control of his own story, and he knew which decision was the right one.

"I'll do it."

Bad looked taken aback for a moment, before his expression quickly shifted. When he smiled, his sharp fangs gleamed in the light of the room, and yet looked no less intimidating than that of a trained dog. It was probably the first genuine smile he'd had directed at him for so long (since Schlatt got elected, since Pogtopia and the war and the whole mess) and Skeppy's returning grin came easy.

"Well, Skeppy, welcome to The Badlands."

**Author's Note:**

> another dream smp-based fic, but an au this time! hope you enjoyed and as always thank you for reading :)  
> -  
> comments and kudos are very much appreciated! <3


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